One of the sources I’m mining for both images and topics is the alphabetic index to the HABS and HAER collection. I looked at it today and “fink trusses” jumped out at me, so here’s a fink truss roof in the machine shop of the New Haven Railroad, in New Haven. It was constructed in …
I got sucked into a discussion about Oriel Chambers (photo above by Matěj Baťha), an 1864 office building in Liverpool with very open facades, starting here: First, obviously, Oriel Chambers is a fantastic building. Nothing I say here should be construed to mean that I think anything else. The word “skyscraper” is quite subjective, and …
Just down the block from that Federal style house I was taking about are some fancier-than-usual tenements. (Also, in the background, you’ve got a nice view of downtown about half a mile away, but that’s incidental to my point.) I want to talk about the one on the left, on the corner of the block. …
There is only one item in the index to the Historic American Building Survey and the Historic American Engineering Record listed as “dragons.” It’s this cast-iron fence at 1000 North Dearborn Street in Chicago, described as “late nineteenth century.” It is, in my opinion, a beauty. It’s also tiny – the graphic ruler tied to …
That little bridge from 1878, over the Roaring Run in Bedford County, Virginia, is still there and is on the National Register, so with a little luck it will stay there. It’s 55 feet long and 12 feet wide, so it’s not particularly surprising that it is a pony truss: a through truss that short …
